IT Triumphs over Marxism

The Far Eastern Economic Review, in an article in April 2004, predicted that
Kolkata would become India's surprise new hi-tech hub. This article generated
tremendous interest, even the West Bengal government aggressively leveraged it
to attract more IT investments into Kolkata. Many skeptics, however, doubted
this euphoria. It was not difficult to understand their apprehensions-at least
thrice during the last decade, expectations about Kolkata's resurgence via IT
have been raised, only to peter out without a whimper.

This time, however, eight months down the line from the Far Eastern Review
article, it seems that the critics might be wrong! Even if Kolkata does not
replace Bangalore or Gurgaon, it still is set to become one of the country's
premier IT hubs-ahead of the usual suspects like Pune, Hyderabad or Chennai.
This optimism is based on two solid pillars-one, an amazing improvement in
infrastructure and two, the radical change in government mindset and the
encouragement it is offering to the industry.

Amongst infrastructure improvements: a large number of IT parks are coming up
and around Salt Lake. In fact, these modern buildings, dotting the whole stretch
of Sector V in Salt Lake and now stretching up to the airport, have virtually
transformed the entire geography of this once marshy land. Interestingly, it is
not only the government which is coming up with New Town at Rajarhat and Sunrise
City in Nonadanga facilities, even private initiatives, like DLF, are coming up
with parks. The Infinity Park is also going for an extension-along with the
existing Millennium Park and the Bengal Intelligent Park. Kolkata would have 4
million sq. ft. of dedicated IT space by March of 2006.

Power has been bountiful in the state for the past years. Kolkata has spent
nearly 25% of its entire Budget on power for the last five years. With 67
engineering colleges in the state, even quality manpower is not an issue any
more. In terms of branding, West Bengal has perhaps been the most active state
in the last two years-even Mukesh Ambani calls the state IT Minister
Manabendra Mukherjee "the only IT Minister in the country who works faster
than Reliance."

Many observers predicted that the actual IT surge in Kolkata would come only
with the arrival of a few big names. This too seems to have happened: IBM and
Cognizant have their second biggest centers in Kolkata and are expanding
further. TCS has one of its largest centers in Kolkata. Azim Premji's open
endorsement for the city, while setting up facilities for both Wipro and
Spectramind, were indeed big advertisements. To add to this, Ambani has
announced Reliance's second solutions development center as well as an
engineering college in Kolkata. HSBC has set up a large BPO unit. Satyam, ITC
Infotech and GE are set to open large facilities soon. There are rumors that
even Microsoft has evinced interest to set up their development center in the
city.

Long dominated by Marxist dogma, the state, under CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya,
seems to have suddenly woken up to the fruits of market economics. You can call
it laissez-faire-but Bhattacharya has a more minimalist definition of
communism. "Capitalism cannot be the last chapter of human
civilization." In the meantime, it seems, his government, like China's,
is keen to appeal to the capitalists to attract IT investments. He is even frank
to admit that hostile trade unionism was a mistake and assures it would not be
repeated in the case of the IT industry.

And, more pertinently, the government, despite some internal political
compulsions, is determined to move away from a culture of bandhs. The CM calls
bandhs a disease that needs to be cured for IT to prosper-the doctor has been
identified, once the operation is over we might really raise the toast to a
resurgent East again.

While it is true that the arrival of big name software companies ensure the
growth of a center as an IT hub, one still needs home-grown local players.
DATAQUEST met up with a handful of serious IT/ITeS players from the city to gain
knowledge about their profiles.

Rajneesh De

Descon

Promoted by the Dishergarh Power Supply Company (DPSC), Descon initially
started as its IT arm in 1995, when it developed an ERP for power companies.
Once ERP lost relevance around 2000, Descon stopped the practice and went for
other third-party software development, informs MD S Radhakrishnan. Today,
Descon offers CAD/GIS services including photogammetry, document management
system, communication software, telegraphy system software as well as hospital
management application.

Descon has digitized maps for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and Chennai
Water Board. It has developed a communication software for the Indian Army in
remote areas like Leh and Andaman and a telegraphy system software for BSNL in
Eastern India. On document management, it has a storage and retrieval project
for the 150 year old Kolkata Port Trust.

Though such pronounced domestic focus is laudable, Radhakrishnan admits that
Descon needs to increase its offshore implementation to increase its revenues
from the Rs 18 crore clocked in 2003-04. It is taking care of this through its
UK subsidiary Descon UK. During 2004, Descon formed a 50:50 JV with Telesynergy
Research Inc of US, a provider of IP-enabled office communication solutions, to
set up a 500-seater call centre in Kolkata. Called Descon Soft, it is slated to
become operational, with 100 seats, in January 2005-both the partners have
invested $4.5 mn in the project. Descon also offers bulk bandwidth to corporates
and runs an MSO called Cablecomm in Kolkata which has garnered 40% of Kolkata's
cable connection in about an year.

Vision Comptech 

Part of the real-estate special ist Sharada Group of Com panies, four-year
old Vision Comptech specializes in CAD services (both software and BPO) for many
US and UK-based firms. One of India's largest CAD services companies, it is
focused on domains of marine, architecture, civil engineering, town planning and
mechanical engineering. The prima donna amongst its clients is American Bureau
of Shipping (ABS), one of the world's largest marine survey and classification
societies. ABS has consolidated its entire global IT offshore operations
bringing together engineering, drafting and software programming to Vision
Comptech in Kolkata.

Vision Comptech has three other subsidiaries-Collabra Software that
develops smartcard-based applications, Gurgaon-based Citation Infowares that is
into mortgage processing BPO, and Rocal, which is into market research BPO.
Other than its BPO on CAD services, Citation's 200-seater BPO facility in
Gurgaon services about 6 clients on mortgage processing, loan administration and
financial analysis. In August 2004, Rocal has started a pilot on market research
BPO in Kolkata-this outfit is being headed by ex-MODE guy Debi Basu and
another expert Shibu Chattopadhyay.

Informs Vision Comptech CEO, Prabir Dasgupta, "Currently we are
consolidating our three centers into one 10-storied Center Of Excellence. Once
ready, by mid-2005, this 200,000 sq. ft. facility would employ over 2000
people."

Web Development Company

The Rs 15 crore Web Development Company (WDC), one of the most innovative
companies of Kolkata, is promoted by Rahul Sharma, Rahul Todi and Harsh Hada,
who together hold 85% stake, while the rest is held by the Usha Martin Group. It
is one of IBM's largest business partners specializing in Lotus, Java,
Websphere, DB/2, EJB and ASP and has deployed e-business applications for a
number of blue-chip clients like Indian Airlines, Calcutta Stock Exchange and
Tata Steel among others. Its more recent significant projects include deployment
of the entire SCM for Tata Tubes, developing the trading exchange for Coal
India, Metaljunction, Ordinance Board as well as the Metal & Scrap Trading
Company, besides converting the census records for NCAER from Oracle to DB/2.
Even for Kolkata Municipal Corporation, WDC developed the payroll and revenue
generation software for tax collection on DB/2.

Harsh Hada, Executive Director, informs that WDC has also tied up with SAP as
an implementation partner for SMBs and already executed in ITC and Haldia
Petrochemical. Besides, since 2003 it has also started contracting out
professionals for large IT companies-while this is mainly for IBM Global
Services, it has also provided manpower to PWC, i-flex, SISL and Cognizant.
"We train the people and then they are sent to these companies for working
on their projects, though they remain on WDC payrolls," explains Hada. With
this resourcing business already contributing about 20% of the company's
revenues, it has reached No 4 in the country in this domain.

Skytech

Though, strictly speaking, Skytech is not a local homegrown company, with
United Airlines having a majority stake in it features in our list, but as it is
headquartered in Kolkata. D K Chaudhuri, CEO, claims that Skytech is the country's
no 1 IT services company in the domain of airlines. While United Airlines
contributed 85% of the company's revenues of Rs 50 crore this year, this is
expected to touch Rs 100 crore in 2004-05.

Some of its other major projects include: resevation software for Lufthansa,
SITA and projects for Air India and Indian Airlines. In 2004 it bagged a Rs 10
crore deal for the Guangzhou Airport as well as for upgrading the Beijing
Airport for the 2008 Olympics. The company is also developing global technology
standards spearheading technical consultancy through industry associations like
the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) and IATA. Beyond airlines Skytech also has
expertise in shipping and hospitality.

Chaudhuri informs that during the last 12 months, SkyTECH has doubled
revenues, employees and customer base. It is currently going on a major
expansion drive in both Kolkata and Mumbai-a third development center will be
opened in Chennai early next year, while that in Bangalore is already
operational.

Globsyn Technologies

Founded by the IT industry veteran Bikram Dasgupta, Globsyn has redefined IT
training in Kolkata. TechnoCampus-Globsyn Software's finishing school has
been in existence from 1997, to create industry ready software professionals
with integrated developmental competencies. Young Software Manager, the flagship
program, has been running successfully for more than seven years now.

Says Chairman & CEO Dasgupta, "TechnoCampus can be seen as a 21st
century gurukul with globally benchmarked courses, and industry relevant."
Recently, Globsyn has also started a one-year old PGDCA diploma program on
software engineering and business management along with Jadavpur University.
Calcutta University has also started a post-graduate program on data management
with Globsyn.

Globsyn launched its new wave, all-age integrated learning centers, called
KnowledgePubs and it has acquired Schoolcircle.com, an online self-learning
network for schoolgoers. Globsyn is also conducting personality development
workshops across engineering colleges in West Bengal.

Globsyn has a BPO Academy which provides soft skills and domain knowledge in
areas of tech support, healthcare and financial services. The company also has
the Globsyn Entertainment and Media Management School exclusively for the media
and entertainment industry.

While training provided 45% of Globsyn's revenue of Rs 15 crore in 2003-04,
Dasgupta hopes its software and BPO offerings would push it to Rs 25 crore in
2004-05.